majesty about the atmosphere of the little great--if I may be
permitted so equivocal an expression--which mere physical bulk alone
will be found at all times inefficient in creating. If, however,
Bon-Bon was barely three feet in height, and if his head was
diminutively small, still it was impossible to behold the rotundity
of his stomach without a sense of magnificence nearly bordering upon
the sublime. In its size both dogs and men must have seen a type of
his acquirements--in its immensity a fitting habitation for his
immortal soul.

I might here--if it so pleased me--dilate upon the matter of
habiliment, and other mere circumstances of the external
metaphysician. I might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short,
combed smoothly over his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped
white flannel cap and tassels--that his pea-green jerkin was not after
the fashion of those worn by the common class of _restaurateurs_ at
that day--that the sleeves were something fuller than the reigning
costume permitted--that the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that
barbarous period, with cloth of the same quality and colour as the
garment, but faced in a more fanciful manner with the particoloured
velvet of Genoa--that his slippers were of bright purple, curiously
filigreed, and might have been manufactured in Japan, but for the
exquisite pointing of the toes, and the brilliant tints of the binding
and embroidery--that his breeches were of the yellow satin-like
material called _aimable_--that his sky-blue cloak, resembling in form
a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all over with crimson
devices, floated cavaliery upon his shoulders like a mist of the
morning--and that his _tout ensemble_ gave rise to the remarkable
words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence, "that it was
difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise,
or the rather a very Paradise of perfection." I might, I say,
expatiate upon all these points if I pleased,--but I forbear; merely
personal details may be left to historical novelists,--they are
beneath the moral dignity of matter-of-fact.

I have said that "to enter the _cafe_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febvre
was to enter the _sanctum_ of a man of genius"--but then it was only
the man of genius who could duly estimate the merits of the _sanctum_.
A sign, consisting of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. On one
side of the volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a _